Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat

125 Pages·2005·1.16 MB·English

ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
AND BIOTERRORISM THREAT
Milton Leitenberg
December 2005
This publication is a work of the United States Government as defi ned in Title 17,
United States Code, section 101. As such, it is in the public domain, and under the
provisions of Title 17, United States Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted.
*****
The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not
necessarily refl ect the offi cial policy or position of the Department of the Army, the
Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This report is cleared for public
release; distribution is unlimited.
*****
This is an expanded version of a paper prepared for an international conference,
“Meeting the Challenges of Bioterrorism: Assessing the Threat and Designing
Biodefense Strategies.” The conference was convened on April 22-23, 2005, by the
Center for Security Studies of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located
in Zurich, Switzerland. The paper is essentially a sequel to the author’s book, The
Problem of Biological Weapons, published in August 2004 by the Swedish National
Defense College, which is the Swedish equivalent of the U.S. National War College.
Although the book is relatively diffi cult to obtain in the United States, by and large
material that is provided in much greater detail in the book is not repeated here.
This monograph is composed almost entirely of new material.
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cfm.
ISBN 1-58487-221-7
ii
CONTENTS
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii
PART I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PART II. The Evolution of State Biological
Weapons Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
PART III. Evolution of Nonstate Actor/
Terrorist Biological Weapons Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
PART IV. Framing “The Threat” and Setting the Agenda
of Public Perception and Policy Prescription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
PART V. Costs and Consequences
of the U.S. Biodefense Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
PART VI. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
iii

FOREWORD
It is nearly 15 years since biological weapons (BW) have become a
signifi cant national security preoccupation. This occurred primarily
due to four circumstances, all of which occurred within a short span of
years. The fi rst, beginning around 1990 and repeated many times in the
years that followed, was the offi cial U.S. Government suggestion that
proliferation of offensive BW programs among states and even “nonstate
actors”—terrorist groups—was an increasing trend. The second was
the discovery, between 1989 and 1992, that the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) had violated the Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC) since its ratifi cation in 1975 and had built a massive covert
biological weapons program, the largest the world had ever seen. The
third was the corroboration by the United Nations Special Commission
(UNSCOM) in 1995 that Iraq had maintained a covert biological weapons
program since 1974, and had produced and stockpiled large quantities
of agents and delivery systems between 1988 and 1991. The last was the
discovery, also in 1995, that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group, which
had carried out the nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system, also
had spent 4 years attempting—albeit unsuccessfully—to produce and
disperse two pathogenic biological agents.
The events of September 11, 2001, although not in any way related
to BW, combined with the distribution of professionally prepared
anthrax spores through the U.S. postal system in the weeks afterwards,
magnifi ed previous concerns by orders of magnitude. In December 2002,
after U.S. forces had overrun much of the territory of Afghanistan, it was
discovered that the al-Qaida organization also had spent several years
trying to obtain the knowledge and means to produce biological agents.
These new factors shifted the context in which BW was considered
almost entirely to “bioterrorism.” Within 4 years, almost $30 billion in
federal expenditure was appropriated to counter the anticipated threat.
This response took place in the absence of virtually any threat analysis.
TThhee ppuurrppoossee ooff tthhiiss mmoonnooggrraapphh iiss ttoo bbeeggiinn ttoo fifi llll tthhaatt ggaapp..
DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.
DDiirreeccttoorr
Strategic Studies Institute
v

SUMMARY
This monograph is comprised of six substantive sections. An
opening introductory section sets the global context in which the
threat of “bioterrorism” should be placed. It briefl y surveys other
nonmilitary challenges to national and global security that the United
States and other nations currently face, and will face in the coming
decades. It does so, where possible, by including the mortality levels
currently resulting from these factors, particularly natural disease
agents, and the levels that can be projected for them. This provides
a comparative framework within which bioterrorism can more
properly be assessed.
The second section, using U.S. Government sources, surveys
the evolution of offensive state biological weapons programs. This
demonstrates that offi cial estimates of the number of such programs
have diminished by between one-fourth and one-third, from a
peak of some 13 nations in mid-2001. What is known regarding any
proliferation from these programs is also surveyed, as well as state
assistance to nonstate actors.
The third section surveys the evolution of the efforts by nonstate
actors—terrorist groups—to obtain, develop, and use biological
agents. The survey covers the entire 20th century, and up to the present
day, focusing on the last 25 years. The efforts by the two groups which
involved the most serious attempts to produce biological agents, the
Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group between 1990-94 and the al-Qaida
organization in Afghanistan between 1997-98 and December 2001,
are reviewed in detail. Using information provided by declassifi ed
documents, as well as information from other sources, this section
provides as detailed an examination as is available of the BW efforts
of the al-Qaida organization.
The Japanese Aum group did not succeed in obtaining virulent
strains of pathogens, nor was it apparently capable of working
successfully with the strains that it did have. The al-Qaida group
also appears not to have been able to obtain pathogens, nor to have
reached the stage of laboratory work by the time U.S. military forces
occupied Afghanistan.
vii
As the most signifi cant examples available, these highlight all the
more the unique character of the anthrax postal mailings in the fall
of 2001 in the United States. The quality of the material that was
distributed demonstrates the dangerous possibilities that could be
achieved. However, until the perpetrator is identifi ed, and unless
it becomes possible to exclude any links with the U.S. biodefense
program, it remains impossible to assess the relevance of this event
as an indicator of what might be expected from international terrorist
organizations.
The fourth section reviews the public portrayal of the BW
threat by U.S. offi cials. It includes a review of offi cial and unoffi cial
exercise scenarios that have been carried out in the past half-dozen
years, as well as recommended planning scenarios proposed by U.S.
Government agencies. It includes a very detailed examination of
several of these scenarios. Many of the exercises are predicated on
the repeated use of the aerosolized pathogens which produce plague
and smallpox. These pathogens are not easy to obtain, and they are
relatively diffi cult to work with. Producing aerosolized formulations
of them is far beyond the current or near-term capabilities of any
identifi ed international terrorist group.
The fi fth and fi nal section discusses the impact of the U.S.
biodefense research program on the possible future development
of biological weapons. A signifi cant issue is the interaction of
constraints and limitations imposed by the terms of the Biological
Weapons Convention, an international treaty which the U.S.
Government was instrumental in bringing about, and the greatly
expanded U.S. biodefense research program already in progress and
set out in planning documents for the near future. The current lack of
departmental and government-wide oversight over these programs
is noted.
The monograph ends with a brief section of conclusions, including
policy recommendations.
viii
PART I
INTRODUCTION
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
on January 27, 2005, U.S. Senate Majority Leader William Frist stated
that “The greatest existential threat we have in the world today is
biological.” He added the prediction that “an inevitable bio-terror
attack” would come “at some time in the next 10 years.”1 He was
seconded by Dr. Tara O’Toole, head of the Center for Biosecurity at
the University of Pittsburgh: “This [bioterrorism] is one of the most
pressing problems we have on the planet today.”2
Are these statements realistic?
Are they even proximately realistic?
By way of the most cursory comparison, one can set potential
bioterrorism against:
• Global climate change, which could affect populations in every
corner of the globe, alter the current growth cycles of food
crops that have evolved over millennia, and consequently
food production;3
• Ocean quality deterioration, deforestation, desertifi cation,
depletion of fresh-water aquifers—all of these are also global
in impact;4
• The complex of global population growth, food production,
energy and other resource constraints, and the waste
products—solid, liquid and gaseous—produced by human
society and the impact of these on regional and global
ecosystems;
• Between 224.5 and 236 million people died in the 20th century
in wars and confl ict—say, roughly 230 million.5 This early in
the 21st century, it is impossible to say whether the harvest of
confl ict-related deaths will be any different in the 21st century
than it was in the 20th century.
• If one adds deaths due to poverty, the fi gures become
astronomical. Jeffrey Sachs currently estimates this sum
1
worldwide at 20,000 people per day, or 7.3 million per year,
approximately 75 million over a 10-year period.6 Some portion
of the deaths that Sachs counts may be due to treatable disease:
these are discussed separately below.
• A working group convened by the Strategic Assessments
Group of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the
RAND Corporation in September 2004 listed 10 “future
national security threats . . . to the United States” looking
ahead to 2020. Of the 10, one was “proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction (WMD)” and a second was “new health
threats, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).”
There was no mention of the use of biological weapons by a
terrorist group.7
• Turning to the 1999 Millennium Project list of “The 15 Global
Challenges We Face at the Millennium,” only 1 of the 15 dealt
with disease agents: “What can be done to reduce the threat of
new and reemerging diseases, and the increasing number of
immune micro-organisms.” It did not include consideration
of “bio-terrorism” at all.8
• No attempt is made in this monograph to draw parallels—
or to attempt a comparison of relative risk or potential
consequences—between the prospect of “bioterrorism” and
cyberterrorism.9 This is despite the fact that hundreds of
attacks on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) computers
and on national infrastructure targets take place every day
of the year, and that numerous successful penetrations have
occurred. Available data a full decade ago indicated that as
many as 250,000 attacks on DoD computers took place in
1995. A 1996 Government Accountability offi ce (GAO) report
characterized 65 percent of them as “successful.”10
• Within a 10-day period between April 6 and April 16, 2005, no
fewer than fi ve other competitors were announced as being
the most dire threat faced by nations:
— nuclear terrorism;11
— 640 million small arms and light weapons around the
world, which are responsible for an estimated 300,000
deaths per year;12
2